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Wallflower

Wallflower

CreditLiz Barclay for The New York Times

Wallflower lies in the shadows just off Greenwich Avenue, without a sign, barely exhaling light. Inside, the space is tight in that way called bijou, two brief rooms under a tin ceiling painted gold, requiring you to lean close to your companions and reminding you that New York really does live up to its myth, as a city of half-secret places like this one.

Wallflower opened in the West Village in October. The front room, lined with marble counters, is devoted to elegant, occasionally roguish cocktails; the slender dining room is furnished with mirrors, orange and gray banquettes and elegant, occasionally roguish bistro fare. Each is accorded equal importance: drinks are overseen by Xavier Herit, who spent seven years as head bartender at Daniel, and food by Jared Stafford-Hill, previously at Adour Alain Ducasse and, more recently, Maison Premiere in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which he helped transform from a period-piece oyster-and-absinthe bar to a worthy restaurant.

There are oysters at Wallflower, too, unembellished, gulps of pure cold brine that made me wish they were always served so. Nantucket bay scallops, doused with Meyer lemon, wobble among bright stripes of sea urchin and carefully piped mounds of cauliflower purée, as if arranged by increasing degree of creaminess. Apostrophes of black sea bass curl over diced seaweed and bright Mutsu apple; the sting is cider gastrique, the salt from seaweed powder.

Much of the rest of the menu feels like a picnic, a collection of cheese, charcuterie and rich little sandwiches on craggy bread. This is how you eat when the main event is conversation, gently nudged along by drinking. It is surprising, then, how good so many of the small plates turn out to be: smoky eggplant under meaty Marcona almonds and thin panes of chorizo and brebis, a firm sheep’s milk cheese from the Pyrenees; chèvre, beaten with honey and a lavender-basil cream, making a bed for pink-edged rounds of French breakfast radishes; slabs of pork rillettes and country pâté, classic and faultless; a sandwich filled with brandade, made not with salt cod but fresh, and erring happily on the side of lushness.

Photo

House-made duck sausage arrives in a stew of tarbais beans.Credit
Liz Barclay for The New York Times

Mr. Stafford-Hill honors French tradition but doesn’t seem beholden to it. Short rib is adorned with a grand-mère garnish of bacon, mushrooms, potatoes and cipollini onions left whole; house-made duck sausage arrives in a stew of tarbais beans, the cornerstone of cassoulet; rabbit ballotine comes forestière, inlaid with mushrooms and truffles. But chicken is surrounded by a version of garbure so evanescent that it hardly resembles the robust stews of yore, with carrots and turnips still retaining crunch and brussels sprout leaves lying upturned like fallen petals.

The kitchen isn’t always consistent. One night, my table converged in silent battle over a beautiful plate of fluke resting in a velvety near-chowder in which razor clams, salty and chewy, acted the part of bacon. Another night, the clams were tough, the chowder blasé. Beef short rib, ignored once in favor of that fluke, proved on a second visit the dish worth fighting for, almost candied from a braise in inky red Sicilian wine.

No matter. Here is Mr. Herit to the rescue, perhaps with Mother’s Milk, a cachaça-based cocktail thick with coconut and wafting the scent of kaffir lime; or Père Pinard, mixing pinot noir syrup and pear brandy, a hat tip to pears poached in red wine; or a blend of cider, Calvados and apple-vinegar shrub — named, of course, Adam & Eve — carbonated in a soda bottle and presented with a striped straw. The childlike touch is charming precisely because the drink is so grown-up.

Wallflower will never be the place to bring an entourage or close a business deal, except of the most delicate variety. It is not a clubhouse for showing off; there is no password, no appraising stare at the door. This is where you go for a rendezvous or lying low.

Thus the John Doe cocktail, lucid and masculine, built on whiskey, dry, nutty sherry and bitter Cynar. It is the kind of drink you sip in the corner, gilding time, not wanting to be found.